Colleen McCullough - 3. Fortune's Favorites

PART VII from SEPTEMBER 78 B.C. until JUNE 71 B.C.

Caesar had seen no reason to hurry home after he left the service of Publius Servilius Vatia; rather, his journey was a tour of exploration of those parts of Asia Province and Lycia he had not yet visited. However, he was back in Rome by the end of September in the year Lepidus and Catulus were consuls to find Rome acutely apprehensive about the conduct of Lepidus, who had left the city to recruit in Etruria before doing what he was supposed to do hold the curule elections. Civil war was in the air, everyone talked it. But civil war real or imagined was not high on Caesar's list of priorities. He had personal matters to attend to. His mother seemed not to have aged at all, though there had been a change in her; she was very sad. "Because Sulla is dead!" her son accused, a challenge in his voice that went back to the days when he had thought Sulla was her lover. "Yes." "Why? You owed him nothing!" "I owed him your life, Caesar." "Which he put in jeopardy in the first place!" "I am sorry he is dead," said Aurelia flatly. "I am not." "Then let us change the subject." Sighing, Caesar leaned back in his chair, acknowledging himself defeated. Her chin was up, a sure sign that she would not bend no matter what brilliant arguments he used. "It is time I took my wife into my bed, Mater." Aurelia frowned. "She's barely sixteen." Too young for a girl to marry, I agree. But Cinnilla has been married for nine years, and that makes her situation quite different. When she greeted me I could see in her eyes that she is ready to come to my bed." "Yes, I think you're right, my son. Though your grandfather would have said that the union of two patricians is fraught with peril in childbirth. I would have liked to see her just a little more grown up before she dealt with that." "Cinnilla will be fine, Mater." "Then when?" "Tonight." "But there should be some sort of reinforcement of marriage first, Caesar. A family dinner both your sisters are in Rome." "There will be no family dinner. And no fuss." Nor was there. Having been told no fuss, Aurelia didn't mention the coming change in her status to her daughter in law, who, when she went to go to her own little room, found herself detained by Caesar in a suddenly empty triclinium. "It's this way today, Cinnilla," Caesar said, taking her by the hand and leading her toward the master's sleeping cubicle. She went pale. "Oh! But I'm not ready!" For this, no girl ever is. A good reason to get it over and done with. Then we can settle down together comfortably." It had been a good idea to give her no time to spend in thinking about what was to come, though of course she had thought of little else for four long years. He helped her off with her clothes, and because he was incurably neat folded them carefully, enjoying this evidence of feminine occupation of a room that had known no mistress since Aurelia had moved out after his father died. Cinnilla sat on the edge of the bed and watched him do this, but when he began to divest himself of his own clothes she shut her eyes. Done, he sat beside her and took both her hands in his, resting them upon his bare thigh. "Do you know what will happen, Cinnilla?" "Yes," she said, eyes still closed. "Then look at my face." The big dark eyes opened, fixed themselves painfully on his face, which was smiling and, she fancied, full of love. "How pretty you are, wife, and how nicely made." He touched her breasts, full and high, with nipples almost the color of her tawny skin. Her hands came up to caress his, she sighed. Arms about her now, he kissed her, and this she found just wonderful, so long dreamed of, so much better than the dreams. She opened her lips to him, kissed him back, caressed him, found herself lying alongside him on the bed, her body responding with delicious flinches and shivers to this full length contact with his. His skin, she discovered, was quite as silky as her own, and the pleasure it gave her to feel it warmed her to the quick. Though she had known exactly what would happen, imagination was no substitute for reality. For so many years she had loved him, made him the focus of her life, that to be his wife in flesh as well as at law was glorious. Worth the wait, the wait which had become a part of her state of exaltation. In no hurry, he made sure she was absolutely ready for him, and did nothing to her that belonged to more sophisticated realms than the dreams of virgin girls. He hurt her a little, but not nearly enough to spoil her spiraling excitement; to feel him within her was best of all, and she held him within her until some magical and utterly unexpected spasm invaded every part of her. That, no one had told her about. But that, she understood, was what made women want to remain married. When they rose at dawn to eat bread still hot from the oven and water cold from the stone cistern in the light well garden, they found the dining room filled with roses and a flagon of light sweet wine on the sideboard. Tiny dolls of wool and ears of wheat hung from the lamps. Then came Aurelia to kiss them and wish them well, and the servants one by one, and Lucius Decumius and his sons. "How nice it is to be properly married at last!" said Caesar. "I quite agree," said Cinnilla, who looked as beautiful and fulfilled as any bride ought to look after her wedding night. Gaius Matius, last to arrive, found the little celebratory breakfast enormously touching. None knew better than he how many women Caesar had enjoyed; yet this woman was his wife, and how wonderful it was to see that he was not disappointed. For himself, Gaius Matius doubted that he could have gratified a girl of Cinnilla's age after living with her as a sister for nine long years. But evidently Caesar was made of sterner stuff.

It was at the first meeting of the Senate Caesar attended that Philippus succeeded in persuading that body to summon Lepidus back to Rome to hold the curule elections. And at the second meeting he heard Lepidus's curt refusal read out, to be followed by the senatorial decree ordering Catulus back to Rome. But between that meeting and the third one Caesar had a visit from his brother in law, Lucius Cornelius Cinna. "There will be civil war," young Cinna said, "and I want you to be on the winning side." "Winning side?" "Lepidus's side." "He won't win, Lucius. He can't win." "With all of Etruria and Umbria behind him he can't lose!" "That's the sort of thing people have been saying since the beginning of the world. I only know one person who can't lose." "And who might that be?" Cinna demanded, annoyed. "Myself." A statement Cinna saw as exquisitely funny; he rolled about with laughter. "You know," he said when he was able, "you really are an odd fish, Caesar!" "Perhaps I'm not a fish at all. I might be a fowl, which would certainly make an odd looking fish. Or I might be a side of mutton on a hook in a butcher's stall." "I never know when you're joking," said Cinna uncertainly. "That's because I rarely joke." "Rubbish! You weren't serious when you said you were the only man who couldn't lose!" "I was absolutely serious." "You won't join Lepidus?" "Not if he were poised at the gates of Rome, Lucius." "Well, you're wrong. I'm joining him." "I don't blame you. Sulla's Rome beggared you." And off went young Cinna to Saturnia, where Lepidus and his legions lay. Issued this time by Catulus on behalf of the Senate, the second summons went to Lepidus, and again Lepidus refused to return to Rome. Before Catulus went back to Campania and his own legions, Caesar asked for an interview. "What do you want?" asked the son of Catulus Caesar coldly; he had never liked this too beautiful, too gifted young man. "I want to join your staff in case there's war." "I won't have you on my staff." Caesar's eyes changed, assumed the deadly look Sulla's used to get. "You don't have to like me, Quintus Lutatius, to use me." "How would I use you? Or to put it better, what use would you be to me? I hear you've already applied to join Lepidus." "That's a lie!" "Not from what I hear. Young Cinna went to see you before he left Rome and the two of you fixed it all up." "Young Cinna came to wish me well, as is the duty of a brother in law after his sister's marriage has been consummated." Catulus turned his back. "You may have convinced Sulla of your loyalty, Caesar, but you'll never convince me that you're anything other than a troublemaker. I won't have you because I won't have any man on my staff whose loyalty is suspect." "When and if! Lepidus marches, cousin, I will fight for Rome. If not as a member of your staff, then in some other capacity. I am a patrician Roman of the same blood family as you, and nobody's client or adherent." Halfway to the door, Caesar paused. "You would do well to file me in your mind as a man who will always abide by Rome's constitution. I will be consul in my year but not because a loser like Lepidus has made himself Dictator of Rome. Lepidus doesn't have the courage or the steel, Catulus. Nor, I might add, do you." Thus it was that Caesar remained in Rome while events ran at an ever accelerating rate toward rebellion. The senatus consultum de re publica defendenda was passed, Flaccus Princeps Senatus died, the second interrex held elections, and finally Lepidus marched on Rome. Together with several thousand others of station high and low and in between, Caesar presented himself in full armor to Catulus on the Campus Martius; he was sent as a part of a group of several hundred to garrison the Wooden Bridge from Transtiberim into the city. Because Catulus would sanction no kind of command for this winner of the Civic Crown, Caesar did duty as a man in the ranks. He saw no action, and when the battle under the Servian Walls of the Quirinal was over, he betook himself home without bothering to volunteer for the chase after Lepidus up the coast of Etruria. Catulus's arrogance and spite were not forgotten. But Gaius Julius Caesar was a patient hater; Catulus's turn would come when the time was right. Until then, Catulus would wait.